Poems of the Known World come to us from the paradoxes and harsh juxtapositions of late 20th-century life - the unkempt homeless sleeping beside a smoothness of marble cut from mountains they will never see and used as the facings of buildings they will almost never enter; male and female reaching toward union while memories of the brutality of war pass between them; the recognition by a market futures trader that his life is as vulnerable and circumscribed as that of a frog he had dissected as a student years before. Kistler is sometimes likened to Wallace Stevens because of his careers in both poetry and business. His concerns, however, are both contemplative and activist. He has looked at the structures of late 20th-century society and understood their effects on our lives. His language and his imagery are at times harsh, at times lyrical; they open new shapes of understanding. These poems resonate with the experiences of an intense life. A fierce seeking is here joined with an expansive heart.
If you are underwhelmed by me, please just let me go... Poems for the End of the World is a coming of age collection and exploration of the confusing and disillusioning trek through young adulthood in a broken world. Divided into four chapters—waking up, growing pains, crushing realities, and disappointing beginnings—this collection covers everything from self-discovery and heartbreak to chronic illness and fresh starts.
Carl Phillips is the author of nine previous books of poems, including "Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006";" Riding Westward"; and "The Rest of Love," a National Book Award finalist. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. This is the second collection of poems by Carl Phillips, whose first book, "In the Blood," won the 1992 Morse Poetry Prize. As "The Boston Book Review" observed, "Cortege" is the work of "an erotic poet, one who follows his sexuality into surprising territory . . . The contemporary scene is fully present [throughout this book], with all its new and old terrors--AIDS, loneliness--but Phillips's richness of mind is such that he often encounters in this life the artifacts of a couple of millennia of art and mythology. Which is not to say these poems have an academic flavor--far from it. The vision is contemporary, the language ours . . . What makes these poems such a coherent whole, in addition to their open sensuality, is the awareness they contain of the inescapable sadness of beauty . . . This is a poet of tact and delicacy, with an understated approach to even potentially explosive subjects." "A classicist by training, Phillips mythologizes the everyday as adeptly as he domesticates Ovid, and the verse [to be found in "Cortege"] is both poised and informal, literate and personal."--"The New Yorker" ""Cortege" is a book that has been packed in salt: the durable salt of artistic making and the bitter salt of longing."--"Alan Shapiro" "The poems of James Merrill and Paul Monette come to mind as one reads Phillips's second collection. Here is a poet who writes with the same masterly elegance, often enhanced by tight, three-line stanzas. References to Ovid, Dante, or Renaissance painting are as lyrical as his frequent descriptions of shadows and birds. 'And now, / the candle blooms gorgeously away / from his hand-- / and the light had made / blameless all over / the body of him.' The word "gorgeously" here points to the care with which each image is sought. Friends, lovers, and, by extension, readers are addressed with a parallel tenderness. Explicit sexual imagery is inserted so delicately that it's impossible to take offence. Written by a poet who also happens to be an African American, these are some of the most sensitive homoerotic poems to be found in contemporary literature. ["Cortege" is] recommended for all poetry collections."--"Library Journal"
The Only Worlds We Know is a nuanced and tactile look at both addiction, and what comes after. Patient meditations on loss and the land where the people we love live and are also buried. Includes poems such as "Waking Up Naked", "The Addict, a Magician", "The Pill", and "Just Yesterday" that have been watched by millions online.
A Compendium of best-loved verse, this giant anthology of over 440 poems contains many of the favorite poems of the American people. Thios volume celebrates the ability of poetry to capture in a few words the thoughts and emotions that reach to the heart of human experience.
From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Edward P. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities. “A masterpiece that deserves a place in the American literary canon.”—Time
The 126 poems in this superb collection of 19th and 20th century British and American verse range from famous poets such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, and Frost to less well-known poets. Includes 10 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
